Gannett Blog blogger Jim Hopkins has created quite a stir by publishing a snapshot of the profitability of the newspapers owned by Gannett. Lots of folks are bashing Hopkins for publishing the information, which was leaked to him, while others are applauding the release of information.
The numbers show the profit margin, and total ad sales for the first three quarters of 2007. For the Asheville Citizen-Times, those numbers were a 23.49 percent profit margin, and total ad sales of $20.6 million.
The numbers confirm what we already knew: the newspaper business is highly profitable. The numbers provide a snapshot in time, and probably don’t capture the revenue downturn that started at the end of ’07 and picked up steam this year.
The context, of course, is that Gannett and the Asheville Citizen-Times are slashing expenditures and cutting jobs right and left while trying to maintain said profitability. Gannett stock has dropped precipitously this year. The Citizen-Times has outsourced ad production jobs to India, laid off about 10 employees at 14 O. Henry Avenue, and announced the reduction of another 60 jobs at its Sardis Road production facility, which it plans to close in January. The newspaper also instituted a 50 percent price increase for the newspaper out of its racks — up from 50 cents to 75 cents for a newspaper.
It’s an insight into some of the irrationality driving the newspaper business into the ground. It’s a mature industry, and because profit margins are dropping, the industry is taking a beating. Ask any businesswoman around, and she’ll tell you that she’d kill for a 23 percent profit margin. But for a public company like Gannett, that’s not enough.
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The negative impact that results from a monopolistic media takeover has become obvious in recent years in Northeast Wisconsin. For example, the Gannett Corporation’s buy-out more than 4 1/2 years ago of what were known for decades as the Algoma Record-Herald, Kewaunee Enterprise and Luxemburg News, which were replaced in 2007 by the "Kewaunee County News," has brought about change for the worse with corporate cookie-cutter journalism placing profit margins over people.
Along with the local staffing cuts, Gannett initially rolled out the Kewaunee County News in a tabloid-style publication as the megacorporation went "on the cheap" with less space for news and sports, before trashing the tabloid after only about a year of existence. The so-called "broadsheet" format that now appears also illustrates Gannett’s preference for superficial journalism.
The year before Frank Wood sold out the newspapers he owned in Northeast Wisconsin to Gannett, former Door County Advocate editor Warren Bluhm, who is now the opinion editor for Gannett’s Green Bay Press-Gazette, described the Gannett Corporation as "the print equivalent of the Wal-Mart-style companies that swoop in, gobble up locally owned businesses and crush what’s left of local competition with predatory pricing and adherence to corporate formulas. Lord help any community that is ‘blessed’ to have its local flavor absorbed by Gannett."
While I held in high regard a number of the staff members who remained before Gannett’s "launching" of the Kewaunee County News, it is the megacorporation’s misguided management that has tainted what appears locally. For example, I witnessed how certain editors prefer being cozy with certain sleazy people in power, rather than publicly holding them accountable for disgraceful deeds.
To put it simply and nicely, it was because of Gannett’s sleazy practices that I sought out employment elsewhere after more than seven years being a journalist for the former Algoma Record-Herald, Kewaunee Enterprise and Luxemburg News.
When I wasn’t hampered by the heavy hand of Gannett’s misguided management, however, I enjoyed covering issues of interest to people in Kewaunee County. Individuals from across the political spectrum praised my election-related coverage, for example.
I worked most of 2007 as a reporter in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, before returning to Northeast Wisconsin in early 2008 to begin another better-paying job than what I had in approximately 2 1/2 years working in the Gannett Empire.
In 2007 I filed a labor standards complaint against Gannett with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development after the megacorporation resorted to smear tactics against me. The DWD found Gannett violated state employment regulations after improperly releasing false accusations about me contained in personnel records I disputed.
While Gannett claims to promote journalistic "diversity," the megacorporation arguably turned the newspaper market in Northeast Wisconsin into the Green Bay Press-Gannett, Kewaunee County Gannett, Door County Gannett, etc., etc. Hopefully other information sources, such as blogs on the World Wide Web, will provide true diversity by covering in-depth what Gannett would rather suppress or superficially present.